


a shadow passed

by efifeadams (brooklynisosm)



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Wakes & Funerals, it's just martha being sad at moritz's funeral, only read this if you want suffering because that's all it has to offer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 02:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10777449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brooklynisosm/pseuds/efifeadams
Summary: She doesn’t know how to say goodbye to this boy, because she never said hello.





	a shadow passed

If there’s one thing that’s certain today, it’s sadness.

The faces of her classmates are tragedy masks, expressions that Martha has never seen before on these people rising from within and playing out in something hard to watch. Thea- who always went out of her way to express her disgust towards  _ him _ . Hanschen- whose features are so often in a smirk that Martha’s doubted they could show any other emotion. Both of them are crying. Almost everyone is crying. 

Martha stands in line, with the rest of them: the children holding flowers, waiting their turn to gaze upon the dead boy and pay him a moment of respect. She wishes for more than a moment. She can’t feel the flower in her own hands; every outer inch of her is cold and numb. If there are tears on her face, she doesn’t know them. 

The only place she can feel is on the inside, and in there, it seems, everything is cracking. The news of his death hit her full-on and now she’s splitting and God, it hurts; it hurts more than it should, it hurts like she’s lost a part of herself; had some precious, irreplaceable thing cut out of her and no one is here to stitch it up. 

Martha has no reason to feel this way. No  _ right.  _ Here she is, in a line that moves slowly forward, of people who knew him but didn’t  _ know him _ . This is where she belongs. Martha never even talked to him, not really, never sat with him or made him laugh or held his hand. She doesn’t know his birthday or his favorite color, doesn’t know what he wanted to do after he finished school, doesn’t know his family. 

She doesn’t even really know why he’s dead. 

No, she shouldn’t grieve for him as deeply, as fully, as she is. Not her place. He’s not hers to mourn for; he was never hers at all. 

Instead she should feel sorry for his father, who stands a few feet away from the coffin, looking at it like he’s afraid of it. But she can’t. Not when her staring over the years revealed bruises just beneath the dead boy’s collar, finger marks around his wrists like bracelets, once high on his cheek. Martha cannot sympathize with this man, who stands so much like how her own father does, whose eyes have that same angry glint even with a dead son. 

She should feel sorry for Melchior Gabor, then. Melchior, who doesn’t stand with the group either. Melchior, who Martha  _ does _ know because Wendla and Thea and Anna speak of him so often. His face is like stone but his eyes are wet and  _ thinking,  _ thinking as always.  _ He _ is the one who knew, who laughed with, who  _ loved _ -

“Martha,” Anna whispers to her, with a gentle nudge. “Your turn.” 

She steps forward, and stares down at him, and he could be sleeping. 

Moritz Stiefel. 

_ Moritz Moritz Moritz Moritz Moritz _

He’s not sleeping. He’s too cold for that. No warm breath passes between his lips; no color flushes on his lightly freckled cheeks. He’s cold and gone and the only remnant left of the Moritz that Martha had once stared after on reflex is the sadness; that will never go away. The hurting, the blue, still rests over him like an aura that only she can see. 

Sad, soulful sleepyhead, a boy she wants so badly to reach for. To wake him up. 

_ I know you, _ she wants to say  _ moritz please i know you please come back please let me tell you, i know you, i see you, i really see you, moritz moritz _

But she doesn’t. She’s imagined so many conversations with him but never once enacted them. She never told him she way she felt towards him, the connection that tied her to his being, and now… now it’s too late. What would she have said, anyway? How? 

_ if she had been there when he died could she have stopped it  _

_ would he even recognize her _

_ or would he close his eyes and blind himself to the girl who would never be blind to him and fall asleep forever _

Martha Bessell loves Moritz Stiefel the way a person could love the moon. But he could never have seen her back. 

“Martha,” Anna says. 

Drops of water fall down onto Moritz. Rain, she thinks, until she hears the sobs and knows that they’re hers. 

Anna reaches for her but Martha pulls away, wiping the tears from her face with fury. 

This is the last time she will ever see Moritz. The thought is a dull stab. 

She doesn’t know how to say goodbye to this boy, because she never said hello. 

With soft hands and a softer heart, she places the flower on Moritz’s chest, empty without a heartbeat. 

There’s nothing to say, no conversation begun that she can put an end to, so she says nothing. 

She steps aside for Anna’s turn. 

Just a shadow passing by, not bright enough for Moritz to see. Soon she’ll return to the dark she came from, the dark she knows well. 

He’ll never have to. He’s an angel, now. 


End file.
